


Six Bullets

by Rirren



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: FebuWhump2021, Gen, Grief/Mourning, SCORPIA Member Alex Rider, Sad, Suicide, febuwhump day 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 06:00:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29746029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rirren/pseuds/Rirren
Summary: Yassen has saved Alex from MI6.
Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich & Alex Rider
Comments: 16
Kudos: 51
Collections: AR Febuwhump 2021, febuwhump 2021





	Six Bullets

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fic I originally planned to write for day 2 of Febuwhump but didn't have time.
> 
> Thank you to Valaks for brainstorming help and Cthulhu for beta reading!

"You've done well."

Alex stands in front of Yassen's desk, his hands clasped behind a straight back, the very image of a soldier. He's still wearing his tactical armour, having come straight back from a hand-to-hand assessment. He stares straight ahead, not even glancing at Yassen.

Yassen is more impressed than he would ever admit. Alex's years with MI6 gave him a head start, but he’s also absorbed Yassen’s lessons quicker than anticipated. He’s succeeded in all the training missions Yassen has supervised him on. Yassen knows he can trust Alex to watch his back.

"You're ready for your first solo mission."

Alex nods. "Thank you, sir."

A no-nonsense answer as usual, so different from his jokes and quips from before. He's quieter, only saying what is necessary now. He hasn't come through the training unchanged, but Yassen did not expect that. Alex is alive and safe and that is worth any price.

He pulls out the mission details from a folder on the desk.

"Sit."

Alex takes a seat, leaning over to look at the documents as Yassen starts to explain. The job will be simple, if all their information is correct—a South American crime gang wants a corrupt politician taken out before he can threaten their operation through his indiscretion. Alex listens intently through the rest of the brief. Then Yassen hands him the folder and rises to let him out of the office.

Alex stands as well, and Yassen is struck with the urge to reach over and … he's not sure. A hand on Alex's shoulder perhaps. He's met every challenge Yassen has thrown at him and he's grown into an operative Yassen is proud of. Instead, Yassen only nods at Alex in approval. He's Alex's mentor, not his parent.

"Dismissed," he says.

*

Alex leaves for Chile and Yassen remains at Malagosto.

Alex needs to do this by himself--needs to figure out how to fulfil the client's contract on his own --the same way Yassen works. But still, Yassen keeps his phone by him the whole time while he catches up on his own training.

Alex sends him updates at the end of each day. He’s observed the target and decided on the time and place to carry out the assassination—during a publicity visit to a school in Concepción that Alex can easily infiltrate thanks to his age.

It’s all by the books, exactly as Yassen has taught him, exactly as they’ve done together many times before, and he's unsurprised when the report comes in of the successful execution.

And then Alex doesn’t check in.

*

It takes 12 hours to charter a plane and fly from Venice to Concepción in Chile. Half the globe away and every second feels like an eternity. He should sleep, should rest—but he can’t. It’s taking all his control to keep from killing somebody. His cold exterior is cracked, and burning beneath is a blaze of emotions he doesn't understand.

Alex will be fine.

He says that to himself over and over on the journey. He's trained Alex himself; he knows Alex can handle himself. And Yassen will be there soon if Alex can't.

*

The man’s face is grey bloodless. As the driver and Yassen's spy on Alex, he's the only one who has any idea of what has happened. He looks like he is regretting that knowledge.

“Tell me again.”

“He set up the shot from the school’s roof; the target was eliminated just as planned. I didn’t see him but he must have left in the panic—no-one looked past the kids’ uniforms.”

“That’s when you messaged me that it was a success.”

The man swallows. “It was successful. Exactly as planned.”

“Except he didn’t arrive at the pick-up location.”

“No, sir,” the man says in a whisper. His skin is clammy as he starts to realise there’s no-one else to blame here.

*

No-one noticed anything, nothing abnormal about the mission. The CCTV revealed nothing—the sparse traffic cameras could not record every angle and Alex avoided their gaze as he was taught. The stampede afterwards was chaos enough that no-one could be picked out of the crowds.

Yassen tracks transportation in and out of the area on the day—flights, buses, ships—and goes down a rabbit-hole of promising leads that eventually lead nowhere.

A day later the police report reveals a smashed phone Yassen recognises—cover torn off and the chip and tracker inside ground to pieces. It doesn’t tell him anything. It could have been deliberately destroyed or it could have easily been knocked out of Alex’s hand and crushed beneath the crowd.

*

Yassen extends his vacation. Scorpia isn’t happy but Yassen has worked for them for a long time—he has more freedom granted to him than other operatives.

He has no other leads than the criminal underbelly of the city, and so he infiltrates himself into it. The criminal association that hired Scorpia appears satisfied and ignorant of the disappearance of the agent but the whole thing could have been a front. Alex could be held captive right now.

He immerses himself in his cover of a petty Polish criminal, making connections when he’s out, and when he returns he scours the archives of every CCTV feed and police report he can get access to. He's been through the hotel room Alex was staying in with the Scorpia operative and found nothing, but took Alex's belongings with him.

He looks through them sometimes when his head hurts from peering at tiny text on computer screens. He leafs through an unfinished notebook with Alex’s Russian notes and an image floats into his mind, as clear as reality—

*

Alex was hunched over a book in the library at Malagosto as he scribbled notes, his brow creased in concentration. Yassen walked over, glancing at Alex’s notes over his shoulder. After a moment Alex looked up, a question in his brown eyes.

“You should focus more on the Russian military guns. They are Cirillo’s favourite.”

Alex’s lips started to turn up, his forehead smoothing out. Yassen cut him off before he could thank him.

“Learn it all by heart,” Yassen said, and walked off without a glance back.

*

—The notes in this book are meticulous, perfect handwriting with strict ruler lines crossing out mistakes and underlining important points. A perfect echo of Yassen's own notes from his training. The doodles and scrawls from the mess of Alex's earlier notebooks have been trained away into nothing.

*

Three weeks pass. Yassen has worked his way up to being trusted with guarding the regional leader in several important business deals. He listens. He nudges others into giving their opinion of recent events. Finally he breaks into the files while he’s meant to be guarding the office, taking them out with him.

There’s nothing.

Nothing but petty inconsequential feuding. Nothing but plotting amongst a group that is profoundly ignorant of anything past their own local squabbles. No mention of a teenager or a young man or anyone who could be Alex.

At this point Scorpia’s phone calls have become harder and harder to fob off. The operative that was observing Alex is now almost certainly observing Yassen and passing along information. At the beginning Scorpia were interested in reclaiming their young operative, but they have become less and less accommodating—now their questions about Alex have become demands that Yassen return. They will be no help anymore.

Yassen turns back to the sole lead he has: the Scorpia operative who was observing Alex.

*

“Go over it again.”

“It went according to plan. I waited at the pick-up for him but he never came.”

“You waited 50 minutes? You did not inform anyone?”

“He’s been late befo—arhgh! W-we agreed to an hour...”

“But you did not contact me until 1 hour and 10 minutes later.”

“I—please, there were police, I needed to get to a safer place—”

*

It's only when there's a dead man underneath his hands that Yassen realises he has lost control.

It's something that rarely happens to him. The few instances usually involve Alex. Yassen does not have many options right now. The best would perhaps be to beg forgiveness and return to Scorpia. If he doesn’t, he will spend the rest of his life running from them. That is the choice: leave Alex, or continue the search with Scorpia at his tail.

In the end it is not a difficult decision to make.

He methodically strips the apartment of his and Alex’s belongings and cleans it, remembering the lessons he gave Alex in covering his tracks. A few hours later and there is no trace of the petty Polish criminal or Yassen. His mobile phone vibrates a couple of times and Yassen ignores it resolutely.

He leaves the body and crushes his phone under his boot. He has no time to try to cover up the dead body. Scorpia will know it’s him but the local police will find no evidence of his true identity.

He steals a car from a nearby street and swaps it several miles out. When night comes he steers it off the road and hides it under vegetation. He sleeps in the backseat with his arms tucked in tightly to his chest.

He dreams about Alex’s first assassination.

*

The time, location and the method were all set up by Yassen—quite different from the disastrous mission that Rothman had given him. Yassen crouched next to Alex, watching intently as Alex adjusted his aim, looking through the scope of the rifle from the window.

Across the street the target sauntered out onto the balcony and leaned against the railing, lazily smoking a cigarette. Alex hesitated, even as the target was right under his cross-hairs. A second passed, and another—doubt set into Yassen's heart—but then a shot cracked the air and the target was falling.

“Up,” snapped Yassen, and Alex broke out of his frozen state.

He dismantled the gun and packed it into his backpack, not quite as fast as he’d done so in training, but perfectly, his face blank as he ran on automatic. Yassen guided him to his feet and they took the stairs at an almost-run, Yassen’s grip on the boy’s arm pulling him along.

They made it through the alleyways to the car, something Yassen had insisted upon. Looking at Alex’s face, he had been right to expect that Alex would need to be extracted quickly. He pushed Alex towards the passenger seat and got in, driving away as soon as Alex was buckled in.

Several minutes later he glanced over, noting Alex's stillness and pale face. “It will get easier.”

Alex's head was bowed, his hands lying limp on his knees.

"It doesn't feel real." His voice was faint.

"It is real," said Yassen. "But it does not matter. You did your job."

"...But—"

"That's all that matters," he said firmly.

He watched Alex from the corner of his eye as he continued to drive, unable to stop until they were far enough away from the scene of the crime. Eventually Alex nodded slowly, turning his face to look out the window. He folded his hands together, hiding his trembling.

Satisfied, Yassen returned his attention back to driving. Alex was strong, just like Yassen had been. And he would learn to survive just the same.

*

He can't find him. There is not enough CCTV and the city is too big. Questioning people has been of little use—Alex's blond hair was dyed at the time, and his Spanish accent flawless enough that he did not stand out from the local populace.

And Scorpia has noticed his choice.

Yassen draws money from his savings as he moves around, managing—just—to keep ahead of the Scorpia agents sent after him. They are an irritating distraction from his search. He was making plans to retire from Scorpia before all this, but it involved parting on better terms and burying his tracks completely.

He calls up any of his contacts that will listen to him, and pores through the research materials he's bought and stolen, but there's nothing he can find that he definitely knows is Alex. Alex has disappeared thoroughly and perfectly.

Unbidden, new suspicions start to form.

*

Turning in information to the highest bidder would be the simplest way to destroy Scorpia.

Yassen doesn't want destruction; he wants answers.

He targets each member of the board, isolating them and interrogating them and leaving them dead. It all culminates in a bloody battle at Malagosto from which he barely escapes with his life. Even that reveals nothing new. Some board members had reservations about Alex. Some, even planned to neutralise him. Yet there is no hint of where he is or what happened on his first solo mission.

Scorpia has burned to the ground and he is covered in its ashes, but for what?

*

Yassen moves back to Concepción. He has grown out his hair and a beard and dyes it regularly, and he hopes that will keep him under the radar as he stays put. He walks through the streets that Alex walked through, passes the school where Alex had his last mission. He never came here with Alex but something about the place makes him feel connected, like he might somehow soak up knowledge through simply being in the same place Alex was.

It's been almost two years. Yassen forces himself through a routine of stalking every unexplored street of the city, trying to discover new meaning in his research, and coming back to an empty house where he attempts to sleep.

He searches in his dreams as well and sometimes wakes to the phantom feel of a hand in his.

*

Yassen made it easy. The man was half dead from the earlier beating, prone on the ground, breath gurgling from his caved-in nose.

“Come on,” he urged, his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “You’ve done this before.”

He had, but only from a distance and a sniper’s scope. Alex readjusted his grip on the knife. His face was pale and slack as he stared at the man still clinging to life.

It will be easier like this, Yassen thought. A mercy kill for someone that was clearly going to die anyway.

“You can end it. Remember your lessons—what will be the quickest way to kill him?”

Alex looked up at him, like he expected Yassen to solve this for him. But this was a lesson Alex would have to learn himself. It had been a long time since Yassen first killed but he knew a killing like this—up close and of someone who presented no immediate danger—was a hard hurdle to clear. But Alex would clear it. He must.

Alex stepped forward, and knelt beside the man. He paused for a second, and then grabbed the man’s hair before slicing cleanly across his throat. Yassen let out his breath in a rush of relief.

He pulled Alex to his feet. The knife clattered to the floor. Alex was limp in his hold. It was fine. He had passed. And killing would be easier for him now.

“Good,” said Yassen. Then he looked at Alex’s blood soaked clothes and held back a reproving sigh. “You will need to be more careful next time though.”

Alex was unresponsive as he led him out of the room. After a few paces Yassen had to catch him when he abruptly fainted.

*

In the end Yassen is not the one to find Alex.

One day Alex's Interpol bounty is not there anymore. An email comes in from an alert he set up on his and Alex's identities: Alex's bounty has disappeared from the website.

By the time Yassen has paid a hacker and downloaded the Interpol documents his mouth is dry and his head feels light. He opens the document and words in red jump out at him.

_DECEASED_

For a second everything blacks out, and when he comes back he is gripping his laptop in a clammy hand. He scrolls down, absorbing the information almost faster than he can read. He does not believe it until he comes to the photos.

His body, shrunken and small. The noose around his neck. His fingernails, smooth and unbroken from a passive death.

The photos document it clinically, but each image sears into Yassen's brain like a burn.

There are no letters, no personal effects except for two photos tucked into the jacket pocket—the housekeeper Jack smiling with her arms around Alex, and Alex and Tom laughing, dressed in uniform from a time when Alex still went to school.

It was so far away from civilisation that it took years for hikers to stumble across Alex.

He did not want to be found.

*

The next day he takes a car out to Alex's last location. It takes a couple of hours to hike out there through the forest and the entire time he's expecting, _wishing_ , government agents to descend upon him—that it's all just a trap to lure him out.

After half an hour of searching the area he finally notices a scrap of rope tied high to a branch above. He climbs the tree and cuts it down, then sits down on the dirt, his back against the trunk.

It's quiet this far from the roads and tourist paths, only the sound of nature—the calls of birds, the buzz of insects, and wind rustling the leaves. He holds the rope in limp hands and waits until sunset.

No one comes.

*

"Why did you help me?"

Yassen glanced up from his book. Alex was supposed to be practicing meditation, but instead of his assigned peace, he was watching Yassen expectantly.

It was 3 weeks since Alex had joined Scorpia on Yassen's offer. It had been after another assignment that Alex had been sent to interfere with. Another mission without training, without back-up, and MI6 showing no sign of stopping.

"Your luck was going to run out. MI6 would have killed you eventually."

"That's not a reason. Why did it matter to you?"

Yassen finally put his book down and looked up at Alex properly. His blond hair curled around his face, kept long in a way designed to emphasise his youth. It didn’t change that Alex was growing more and more like his father—a look in his eyes far older than his age, and a strength born from surviving situations most adults would have died from.

In another kinder world he would have been a normal boy with a father and mother to look after him.

"You should never have been in that world. You should have had a normal life."

Alex folded his arms, staring at him confrontationally. "MI6 never cared about that."

"I'm not MI6."

Alex's posture relaxed. He smiled.

"Thanks."

*

Yassen packs away his feelings for Alex and closes the door on that part of his life.

He takes on a job for the first time in three years. The skills come back to him easily and he completes it perfectly and without problems.

He comes back to his hotel room. He doesn't pack to leave. He sits down on the bed instead, his dead eyes tracing the empty room.

He takes his handgun out. 

Six bullets this time. This is not Russian Roulette.

He's done.


End file.
